The President of the Flying Broom Foundation, Halime Güner has received Embassy of Canada 2021 Human Rights Award for her tireless efforts to advance gender equality and the women’s movement in Turkey.
At the online award ceremony, Canada’s Ambassador to Turkey, Jamal Khokhar, pointed out the importance of efforts to advance the rights of women and girls in Turkey, and congratulated the Flying Broom Foundation, which celebrated its 25th anniversary. Khokhar said, “The Flying Broom Foundation celebrated its 25th anniversary on November 21, this is an incredible achievement” and said that they are very pleased to support the Flying Broom Foundation, which has been working for gender equality.
Halime Güner and her team are giving voice to the women of Turkey, by building networks of local feminist journalists, by leveraging the feminist media content and collaborating with feminist art initiatives. In the last 20 years, the platform has remained as one of the most impactful collaborators of feminist campaigns.
“Now the silence of women has been broken”
In her award acceptance speech,Halime Güner stated that she shares the award with the “women in the Women’s Platform for Equality, women in the women’s councils, and women in the women’s coalitions that cooperates with local governments.
She said, “We don’t know if we are fifty percent of the society, but we know that we are the subjects of one hundred percent of the rights we defend,” reminding that 83% of the Parliament and 97% of the local governments are men, as well as 65% of the land owners.
“There is a nice saying: Sow the obedience, reap the rebellion. That’s why we say every oppression creates its own rebellion. As a matter of fact, in the period when we experienced the 1980 coup, we talked about owning our body, identity, and labor as we do today, and we met with feminism.”
In the continuation of her speech, Halime Güner stated that they are trying to expand women’s solidarity and struggle all over the world with a feminist organization, and emphasized that the Flying Broom Foundation’s takeover of the new term secretariat of the World Women’s March is directly related to these efforts.
Reminding that the Flying Broom International Women’s Film Festival has been going on for 25 years, Güner stated that this is the result of efforts to bring the civil movement together with art. “Feminist art, which is a platform for resistance and a tool for liberation, and films within the festival have been our strongest forms of expression that convey messages about our struggle.”
Saying that silence has been broken in Turkey now, Güner said, “We have come to a new threshold in the struggle for women’s rights. The discussions around the Istanbul Convention led to an increase in awareness in the country. Silent supporters multiplied in marches, rallies, and in the fields.”